This particular Echidna lived during the Upper Pleistocene era which was millions of years long and ended just over twenty thousand years ago. It was about a metre long, apparently the size of a sheep. How marvellous! A giant echidna! What were they thinking?
The Giant Sheepchidna
The Upper Pleistocene era in Australia is characterised by a cornucopia of gigantic mammals and reptiles and big XXXXXXL stuff like birds running about. Perhaps Rural And Regional Australia’s predilection for “Big” things (Big Merino, Big Prawn, Big Latte) is a subconscious psychic hangover from this time. Or not.
I am keen on this particular beast because whenever Julia Gillard’s boyfriend Tim Mathieson appears in one of my cartoons his role is played by Zaglossus hacketti. (Tim was asked but was not available) (Alright, he wasn’t asked, having a giant prehistoric echidna play the deputy prime minister’s hairdresser boyfriend is much funnier than getting the actual human to do it. A human who I would draw as a dog anyway.)
To continue…
As the subject of today’s post, Zaglossus hacketti is proving enormously tricky to track down. On the internet anyway.
Wikipedia says…
This species is known only from a few bones. At a metre long, it was huge for an echidna and for monotremes in general.
And Museumvictoria says…
And that is about it. The only known example, found It doesn’t even look very different, just like a regular echidna except bigger.
Not even anything on the mysterious “Echidna train” (more on that later).
If anyone knows the whereabouts of an example of this particular beastie, or has any other information, or has a hairdresser boyfriend who is also an echidna megafauna paleontology expert. Please let me know. I mean, someone found it, someone named it.
Can anyone dish the dirt on Zaglossus hacketti?
Here are bits of the cartoons I drew that include a giant Echidna as Tim Mathieson.
Julia's Hair
And there might have been another one but I can’t find it. It will turn up. Be patient, it has been waiting thousands of years.
2 Comments
Just so you don’t feel lonely, there’s a guy being interviewed on radio National right now who is also a …. paleo illustrator! Or some other word like that that tells people who went to good schools and paid attention that he draws fossils, and gets paid for it, apparently. His name is Peter Something and he got the gig for doing the latest series of stamps for Australia Post, Megafauna
Maybe we’ll see a firstdog series of stamps one day, which would be cool, but I reckon having your work doing the drying in at Kev and Tess’ place is even cooler.
Cheers, GBS
‘Zaglossus’ hacketti – Glauert, 1914
Fossils are only known from cave deposits in southwest WA, original material from Mammoth Cave (near Margaret River), also LIndsay Hall Cave on the Nullarbor Plain. All fossils are housed in the WA Museum collections, Perth – dunno if they have them on display anymore but they DO have a rigorous life-size model of the animal by Martin Thompson – might have a photo lying around somewhere if you want me to dig it up. Note that this is a fragmentary fossil critter – we have vertebrae, bits of the sternum and shoulder girdle and limb bones – but no skull unfortunately so we are unsure if it actually belongs in Zaglossus (the living long-beaked echidnas of New Guinea) in the first place or should be in a genus of its own.
Seems to have had longer legs and a more upright posture than living echidnas.
Good reading – Long, Archer, Flannery and Hand (2002) Prehistoric Mammals of Australia and New Guinea.UNSW press.